Kelly (whom I thanked earlier today for linking to "BISS") mentions me in a real live, bona fide post on her "blog" (that's "web" + "log", for those of you who aren't hip to the lingo) (I'm hip to the lingo, of course, but I still insist on putting "blog" in quotes because it doesn't feel natural coming from my mouth or flowing from my fingertips).

Now, more than ever, the paparazzi will. not. leave. me. alone! Can't a girl enjoy a simple Saturday afternoon without rabid throngs of professional voyeurs crowding her fire escape hoping for a glimpse of her fanning the depths of the most magnificent cleavage this side of Sophia Loren?

BISS girl needs to grow up

Program Notes: I originally posted this yesterday afternoon at 4:25, and at some point deleted it because it wasn't completely "baked". This morning when I posted something small, this post disappeared. Thankfully I had saved it in Word, so here it is, in all its glorious, half-baked entirety. I have made no changes to the original. And now, on with the show ...

If you ever find yourself taking a shower at someone else's house and you think it'll be fun to use their five-year-old son's "Bananaberri"-scented all-in-one shampoo/conditioner, don't do it. Resist the marvelous temptation to indulge that whining inner child. In fact, drag that inner brat by its upper arm and force it to stand with its face in the corner until the urge passes. Because yesterday I learned the hard(-haired) way that sometimes rich, thick, groovy-smelling lather can yield results that only a scarecrow would be proud to display. You would think that a girl whose hair's appearance can "make" or "break" her day really wouldn't go about experimenting so capriciously. You'd think she would or should know better. Especially at her age.

So during my three-day jaunt to the Philadelphia suburbs (I was visiting friends -- a family whose first initials are "BIS", an unintentional, of course, homage to "BISS"), I decided that since I already washed my hair with a substance that could double as a dessert topping, and since that inner bastard took its punishment so quietly and readily, I needed to reward both by buying a Chococat shower cap. I should be ashamed of myself.

But my hair wasn't the only one that was so lucky. No, my feet also needed a treat. So "S" and I went to a horrid little hole in the wall to get pedicures. One little tip to you, ladies: Don't ever use a pedicurist whose toenails are longer than a coke-user's pinky nail. She won't understand when you tell her that the color that looked so good in the bottle looks, on your toes, "whorish", "cheap", "tacky", "too shiny", and "something you would use on a car, damn it". In fact, she'll insist on continuing to heavy-handedly glop the polish onto your embarrassed toes until you are finally forced to yell, "It looks like something only a fucking hooker would wear!" without the slightest bit of guilt even when you notice that her talon toes sport something similar. (In all fairness, the color -- "I'm Not Really A Waitress" by OPI -- would have been acceptable had it been applied by someone who knew what she was doing. Of course, that didn't stop me from calling it "I'm Not Really A Waitress -- I'm Really A Fucking Whore".)

And lest you think the treats were limited to the two extremes of my body, let me just end the story (if you can call it that) (and no, you really can't, because there's no point to all of this) by telling you that all my troubles were forgotten when, yesterday evening, I threw all caution not only to the wind but the hurricane and threw down at least half a box of Reese's® Puffs®.

5.21.2002

Apologies, apologies

I apologize, everyone, if your day was ruined because you weren't able to get onto my page earlier today. I realize that going without my wonderful words is like going without coffee, heroin, or your daily dose of "Family Circus", so I really do sympathize. I just hope everyone had enough of his or her alternate addictive substance today in order to "cope" with the harsh reality that my adorable prose was not available.

So please accept my apologies if you spent the day curled under your desk in a ratty chenille robe, arms wrapped around your shivering knees, rocking gently to and fro, braiding what little hair you had left after you pulled it out just moments earlier, humming TV theme songs softly to yourself, cursing me and saying in a singsong baby voice, "Because I say so, because I say so!"

5.20.2002

Stick it to me, baby!

I'm not the kind of girl who gets upset when people call me one. Indeed, you can call me a chick. And I'd love it if you called me a dame, broad, or skirt (even though I rarely wear one). But if you want to make me cringe, refer to me as a "woman" or a "lady". (As an aside: Once, when I was with a female friend, a guy called me a "young lady". I laughed and said in my best scratchy-throated-cigarette-voiced-quasi-Jewy voice, "Oh my god, he called me 'lady'!" My friend laughed and responded, "Oh my god, he called you 'young'!") It's just difficult for me to consider myself a "woman" when I still can't say the word "vagina" without mentally gagging, never discuss my "period" or "PMS", and can't even consider these words without surrounding them by quotes, even when they merely reside inside my head and not on the page. And yes, of course I know there's more to being a "woman" than those things (please, I beg of you, don't make me type those words again). I know there's stuff like knowing what the word "escrow" means and how to fold sheets properly and how to hem pants and oh so much more.

And it's not like I'm not a "feminist", either. I am. But I don't know what kind of feminist I am. I don't know how to define it and don't have any desire to do so. I do know that I'm not the type of girl who thinks that my grandest achievement in life is to be ornamental (although I must proudly admit that that is something at which I really do excel). I know that I have never wanted a baby, will not coo at yours, and when he (and yes, I'm using "he" rather than "s/he") reaches the age where he is able to speak, I will not talk to him as if he were still an infant. In fact, when he is an infant, I won't speak to him that way either. I also have no desire to be married, never dressed up as a bride as a child, and can't stomach the idea of someone above Communion age actually wearing a white frilly dress.

Anyway, I have this plastic device (please, boys, let me finish the sentence) called the "Spaghetti Stick". Along its 10-inch length, it has six holes of graduated size, marked as follows (I don't quite get what the fractions and numbers in bold represent):

When I first bought this thing, I was actually a bit disturbed that whoever was responsible for the categories decided that a "woman" would ("or should!," I fumed) eat only as much as a 10- to 12-year-old child, 1/4 of a measurement less than a man or teenager. I think I was even a little put off by the realization that a "woman" was probably not meant to be included in the "ADULTS" category at all, represented by the two largest holes on the Spaghetti Stick.

I actually considered writing an irate letter to the manufacturer, and told myself that I could even write some sort of feminist treatise, based on this outrage, worthy not only of the bachelor degree I was pursuing at that time but also of a doctorate. Well, quite a few years later, this girl, who measures more for herself than is allotted for "3 ADULTS", let alone a mere "MAN", thinks it's absolutely hilarious that someone out there would consider her constitution so delicate that she could only stomach as much as a little girl, but still fantasizes about converting the Spaghetti Stick into a meter to measure the spaghetti dick of the man she just knows is responsible for the contraption.

5.19.2002

Whoa, girl

Would someone please tell me why oh why oh why I'm staying up "late" to watch Showgirls on VH1? They're dubbing over the "bad" words and blurring out the "good" body parts! How am I supposed to follow the story now?

Trashcan't

The other day I was walking down (or maybe up) some street somewhere (don't you love how precise I'm being? I mean, you can almost see the street now, can't you?), and this guy ahead of me had a bottle he wished to dispose of (a/k/a "trash"), but rather than just drop the thing onto the ground with either the defiance or insouciance displayed by so many other people who litter, he actually walked over to a trashcan to throw it away. At first he took a bit of ginger care to place his bottle atop the heap that was already there, and I found myself smiling at and applauding his tenacity. I started feeling slight stirrings of magnanimity not only for this individual man but for "man" as a collective whole, and just as I began thinking Maybe not everyone in the world is an inconsiderate slob with no respect for the planet, I was forced to renege.

It turned out that in his attempt to place his bottle into the overflowing mess, he displaced several others, which clattered and crashed to the ground surrounding the trashcan. For the one bottle that he tossed away, at least three others were dislodged, thus defeating the purpose of even bothering to throw his own away in the first place. So just as quickly as I'd experienced a rare moment magnanimity, his ignomity incurred my enmity. (Don't I sound smart?) Because for one fleeting moment I was willing to suspend my usual attitude toward people, only to have that feeling displaced as quickly as the trash was.